In a large-scale anti-drug operation involving hundreds of Mexican soldiers and Federal Preventative Police troops, a total of 27 mayors and public officials were arrested May 26 in President Felipe Calderón's home state, Michoacán. Among the detained were the mayors of Apatzingán, Uruapan, Buenavista Tomatlán, Coalcomán, Nuevo Urecho, Arteaga, Tepalcatepec, Aguililla, Tumbiscatío and Ciudad Hidalgo. Several officials were also detained in the state prosecutor's office in Morelia, which was stormed by federal troops.

Enrique Torres, leader of ejidatarios (communal farmers) who led protests against mining operations last year in Huizopa, Chihuahua, was arrested by state police May 24. He is charged with illegally blockading operations of the Minera Dolores company. The arrest comes days after the company gave six houses to relocated families, as well as 45,000 pesos (approx. $3,400) for a church and 50,000 for a community baseball team. Torres, minutes before his arrest, told El Diaro newspaper that more than half the Huizopa ejidatarios (120 of 220) rejected the deal with the company. (El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, May 25)

On May 20 the Mexican government's National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) announced that the country's gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 8.2% in the first quarter of 2009 compared to the same period the year before. The next day Salomon Presburger, president of the Concamin business organization, told a Mexico City press conference that the country had already lost 300,000 jobs in 2009 and would probably lose a total of 600,000 during the year, half of them from the industrial sector, in which he expected a 12-13% contraction. He predicted that the numbers would be even worse when statistics come in on the effect of the H1N1 influenza ("swine flu"), which has caused at least 74 deaths to date, has reduced tourism and led many companies to shut down for a week in late April and early May.

Nearly a week after dozens of inmates walked out of a prison in Zacatecas, the central Mexican state's top security official, Public Security Secretary Alejandro Rojas Chalico, resigned May 22. Authorities are still trying to track down the 53 prisoners who left Cieneguillas prison in the city of Zacatecas May 16 with the help of 20 men as prison guards stood by. (CNN, May 22)

Some 50 relatives of a group of men ordered detained for 30 days in connection with the dramatic jailbreak at a high-security prison in Mexico's north-central Zacatecas state blocked the Zacatecas-Guadalajara highway for 30 minutes May 19, outside the local offices of the Prosecutor General of the Republic (PGR) in Zacatecas City. They demanded to see the detained, who are being held incommunicado, and the evidence against them. Among the 44 detained is the former director of the Cieneguillas prison, Eduardo Román García. (El Financiero, Notimex, May 19)

Despite the cancellation of the official May Day parade as a measure to combat the spread of "Swine Flu," some 200 workers marched on Ciudad Juárez's central Avenida 16 de Septiembre, chanting "Este día no es de influenza; es de lucha y de protesta" (This isn't a day of flu; it's a day of struggle and protest). At the city's Plaza de Armas, they burned three piñatas representing the educational, economic and labor reforms of Mexico's federal government.

The Mexican military is failing to hold its members accountable for human rights abuses, according to a report released April 29 by Human Rights Watch (HRW). According to the report, the use of the military by President Felipe Calderón to combat drug cartels has resulted in human rights violations by soldiers, including killings, torture, rapes, and arbitrary detentions. The report states that these abuses have gone unpunished, with no convictions resulting from any investigations.

The mothers of three young women who were tortured, raped, and brutally murdered in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, in 2001 testified before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Santiago, Chile, this week. The families brought the case against Mexico on behalf of victims Claudia Ivette González, Esmeralda Herrera Monreal and Laura Berenice Ramos Monárrez, charging that the families of hundreds of murdered women and girls in Juárez have been denied their right to a trial. Mexico is also accused of violating the Inter-American Convention to Prevent, Sanction and Eradicate Violence Against Women (1994 Belem Convention). The case is known as "Campo Algodonero," for the outlying area where the three women were killed, along with several others. (El Diario, Juárez, April 30; Santiago Times, Chile, April 27)